Intelligent AP: The CFO's playbook to continuous finance, efficiency

Mohammed Mosam, Head of Growth and Go to Markets at the Brilliant Link.

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Being a CFO or finance leader today isn’t about perfect record-keeping; it’s about strategic velocity, the ability to turn information into foresight and foresight into action.

Consider the role that artificial intelligence (AI) plays in everyday life, quietly transforming efficiency from the seamless navigation provided by Google Maps to the predictive insights that fuel Netflix recommendations. For businesses, AI is now accessible, affordable and purpose-built to execute a similar transformation in finance, starting with the highest-volume, highest-friction process: accounts payable (AP).

Imagine automation that doesn’t wait for your instruction but acts alongside you, initiating, executing and optimising. Workflows that build themselves, reconciliations that happen in real-time, insights that surface the moment they’re needed. That’s the new reality of finance.

Yet, for many teams, this progress is slowed by what we call the invisible drag, the manual friction of high-volume, low-value processes. It’s what stretches a month-end close to seven or even 14 days, turning strategic foresight into historical reporting. The freedom lies in accessible, trustworthy, intelligent automation that accelerates every part of the financial engine.

For years, “automation” in finance meant scanning documents faster, not working smarter. Optical character recognition (OCR) could read text, but it couldn’t understand it. Human intervention was still needed to fix, check and interpret every inconsistency.

As Mohammed Mosam, Head of Growth and Go to Markets at the Brilliant Link, explains: “When digital transformation is done right, it's like a caterpillar turning into a butterfly. But when done wrong, all you have is a really fast caterpillar.”

That “fast caterpillar” represents partial automation speed without intelligence. It helps you move quicker, but keeps you crawling in the same process loop. True transformation, the “butterfly”, emerges when machine learning (ML) takes over, learning the context of every transaction and evolving with your business.

Modern intelligent document processing (IDP) understands supplier invoices the way your finance team does. It identifies suppliers, assigns ledger codes, matches purchase orders and flags anomalies automatically, no manual intervention needed. The result? Time savings of up to 50% in accounts payable processing, labour cost reductions of 40%-60%, and more capacity for strategic analysis.

True AI transformation doesn’t replace people, it amplifies their performance. Intelligent systems such as Sage Intelligent GL use machine learning to review thousands of transactions in minutes, proactively flagging anomalies and shifting accounting from reactive month-end reconciliation to continuous assurance. Similarly, Sage Intelligent Time automates the reconstruction of billable hours, improving accuracy and helping organisations recover significant lost revenue.

For finance teams managing multiple entities, AI-driven automation extends streamlining by further automating complex consolidations, inter-entity eliminations and multi-currency transactions. This level of intelligence and precision enables close cycles to accelerate by up to 79%, freeing capacity and unlocking the agility every modern CFO needs.

Successful AI adoption doesn’t require an overhaul; it's a focused, strategic journey built on measurable results.

1. Identify the problem: Start by meticulously calculating the cost and time of one high-volume, low-complexity process, such as supplier invoice processing. This establishes the measurable baseline for success.
2. Partner and pilot: Engage a certified service provider to ensure implementation is customised to your needs. Begin with a small, controlled pilot project that automates the existing manual process for a specific group of vendors.
3. Automate and Integrate: Deploy the cloud-based solution, leveraging AI to automate data capture and routing. Modern systems enable zero-disruption integration and no-code workflows, empowering the finance team to manage approval routes without IT intervention.
4. Measure and scale: The principle is simple: if it can be measured, the success will be clear. Track key metrics like the reduction in average time to process an invoice and the percentage of touchless processing achieved. Once the ROI is proven, scale the automation to other functions, such as the GL and time management.

The next wave of AI in finance is already here, from predictive cashflow projections to generative tools that assist with variance analysis and forecasting.

By embracing trustworthy AI today, you move your finance team from reactive to proactive, freeing them from manual drudgery and positioning your organisation at the forefront of intelligent performance.

Because the future of finance isn’t about working harder. It’s about working smarter, faster and more purposefully with technology that doesn’t just inform your next move, but helps you make it.